TASK 9. "INFOGRAPHIC: TEACHING COMPETENCE FOR A DIGITAL WORLD" - Stars

The stars of this week were Sofía and Noelia, who explained to the class the elements of the infographic, as well as the relationship between all of them, how the infographic was done, and what aspects of doing an infographic we have used when realizing it.

The stars of this week were Sofía and Noelia, who explained to the class the elements of the infographic, as well as the relationship between all of them, how the infographic was done, and what aspects of doing an infographic we have used when realizing it. Here we attach a link to our infographic. Hope you like it!: INFOGRAPHIC

Also, in the following paragraphs, you can see the written presentation that our stars prepared for Wednesday:

To make this infographic we have followed both some steps to develop it correctly and also we have taken some aspects into account that we considered important. In addition, we will explain what is related to each element as everything is connected and it's important to reflect deeper and relate the content.

STEPS FOR DOING AN INFOGRAPHIC

We followed 4 steps (Preparation, Content, Design, and Publishing step). In the preparation step, we cleared the concepts up in our minds as we read the text and we set the topic (teaching competence for a digital world), the goal, and the most important features. We also looked for inspiration and gathered information from other sources to consider the structure and distribution of the content (content step). Regarding the design stage, we decided to use certain colors and fonts.. as you can see here to make it more visual and as clear as possible but in a creative way. The last step is happening right now, as we are presenting it to you and we have uploaded it to our blog, like every week.

ASPECTS WE TOOK INTO ACCOUNT

An important aspect was what we would do our infographic with, and in the end, we decided to do it with Canva. It was very convenient and useful for us to use it, as it doesn't require having professional skills in designing. After watching the teacher's videos we have realized that making one is not as simple as it seems and it is important to choose well: the colors, the background, the icons related to each other, try to make the text look good but at the same time not too much to understand it visually, to divide the information by sections, to make graphics, to use geometric shapes… Moreover, we were very conscious and concerned about what was a good infographic as we didn’t want to confuse it with a poster so we changed our design many times to adjust to the goal of the task.

So the topic of this task was: Holistic Teaching Competence for a Digital World and we represented it here in our infographic. Teachers must possess "fundamental professional qualities" needed to educate in and for the digital world that we show in this infographic. These dimensions must be understood from a holistic (to see things in their entirety, in their totality) and systemic perspective (understanding the functioning of the parts together as a whole).

Now we are going to explain the elements and the relations of each one. (These are skills that a teacher must have to work in a digitized world)

1. Generator and manager of emerging educational practices: this means staying up-to-date with ICTs and applying them to the classroom exploiting their full potential, going beyond the basics, and creatively using them to engage students and developing their practices and methodologies with them that respond to the learning needs of students using ICT. Relation: the added value of using digital methodologies is the change from traditional classes to innovative ICTs which helps to advance society. Both teachers and students need to develop digital competencies to foster a digital classroom environment.
2. Expert in digital educational content: is to know which tools to use and how to use them according to the student's needs, it is important to have a lot of digital tools for each educational area, and finally, applying and understanding ICTs plus pedagogical techniques. This has to do with something we have already studied, which is TPACK (technological Content Knowledge): the relationship between the knowledge of the content being taught and technology. Relation: related to TPACK, since not only do teachers need to be experts in the content subject to be taught, but they also need to acquire the pedagogical and technological skills so that learning happens and is always related to the needs of their students, that is one of the most important things.
3. Expanded reflective-practical: to analyze (in and on-action) and evaluate results for the future, observing how the activities are going and introducing unplanned changes, and being conscious of your decisions to make sure that this helps the development of your students. A teacher is a reflective professional or researcher so he/she must know how to take advantage of digital networks and their interconnection possibilities to enrich that research. Relation: thanks to ICTs, teachers have the chance to be aware of the activities they are creating and changing them to improve future results. That way the development and learning of their students improve. There are many digital tools for reflective teachers as we already studied in other subjects (Educational Planning) such as a: teacher portfolio, video recordings, a digital agenda…
4. Expert in enhanced organizational or personal learning contexts: his/her ability to learn and to understand and use something that we also studied, that is: PLE. To have the capacity to create, manage, enrich, expand, and adapt their own personal learning environment (PLE) through the use of ICTs. This includes not only the "resources, information sources, connections and activities" that a teacher uses regularly to learn, but also the attitudes and conditioning that organize our learning action. Relation: related to the specific PLE of each teacher since each one of them creates, changes, enriches, organizes... their PLE thanks to the ICTs because they allow access, to recreate and to discuss information.
5. Sensitive to the use of technology from the social commitment perspective: If we understand the teacher as the educational professional who empowers, socializes, and subjectifies the person, we must think of a teacher who is sensitive to the social and ethical imperatives of his or her time. To see this in the context of the digital world, there are two perspectives. Firstly, the teacher is able to understand the role of technology as a tool for social engagement, modeling, and shaping citizens. Secondly, he or she must implement critical literacy, understand and problematize the assumptions behind the tools and dynamics he or she uses, to use them from informed knowledge. Relation: the teachers need to be aware of the tools they use with their students as well as their pros and cons. This element is related to Task 5 where we evaluated the different tools of our PLE as a group and we were aware of the privacy level of each one.
6. Able to use technology to expand his/her relationship with the student's family and environment: Recently, there have been many changes in the way families are constituted, in their components, and also in the origin of the student body. That is why ICTs have played a fundamental role in increasing the communication capacity between teachers and families, since nowadays these digital media are used to inform families, among other many things. This contributes to creating more opportunities for students, has improved communication between both parts, reduces inequalities inside the classrooms and teachers can instruct students on the use of the Internet and the dangers of it and social media. Relation: the family is very related since the more involved parents are, the better outcomes students get. This involvement is thanks to the digital commutation between teachers and parents, and teachers and students. 

The most important thing for us was to relate the content, so finally these are some more relationships that we have found after reflecting on the topic of this presentation:

Concerning education, we can see that many of the dimensions are related to things studied in the classroom that we have previously looked at in-depth such as the TPACK framework, the PLE, and the SAMR model. It's great to be able to relate previously studied content to other things and relate them as it means that our learning has been quite significant.

In society we can appreciate how the content affects and is affected in the real world (element number 2), how important are communication skills, the social networks, ethics, and social imperatives, the importance to create critical, reflective, and committed citizens and finally, human and social relations within teachers, community, students, families through the use of ICTs that improves a lot of connections and communications and that have lots of benefits for all.

Regarding the participants, teachers, students, the community, and families interact and are increasingly united thanks to technology, more parental implication means better academic results for students, moreover, thanks to technology different teachers around the world can share their methodologies and digital tools and take advantage of each other to provide the best academic experience for their students.